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Saturday, November 29, 2014

If you thought you might die young, what would you do? Would you choose to spend time with loved ones or would you try to experience all the things you wanted to see and do? Maybe you'd do both, like Jennifer Coburn did. Over the span of eight years, she and her young daughter took four different trips to Europe to see some of the wonderful sights there but also to build memories together in case Jennifer died young like her own father did. She's recaptured these precious trips in her memoir, We'll Always Have Paris.

There were many reasons that Coburn first decided she wanted to take her eight year old daughter Katie to Europe. She wanted her to experience amazing things, different cultures and people, to see that life is both different and the same in other places. She wanted Katie to be confident and fearless, willing to travel to foreign places, and to escape the anxieties that plague Coburn herself. But perhaps most of all, Coburn was only a teenager when her father died and she never felt as if she got to spend much quality time with him. She didn't want her own daughter to feel this same way about her even if, as Coburn the worrywart suspects, she too will die young. And so she decides to take Katie to Europe instead of fixing up their house or any other myriad of things their family could do with the money spent on a European trip.

Part travelogue, part mother daughter story, part memorial to the father she lost young, Coburn writes lovingly of her experiences through the years as she takes Katie to France, to Italy, to England, to Spain, and to Holland. She captures Katie's generous and accepting spirit and acknowledges her own fearfulness and worry as she learns to let go a little and embrace detours, last minute changes, and inescapable events. Katie's innocence on the first trip fades away but, over the next three trips and eight years, she never loses her openness, wisdom, and interest in new experiences. As Coburn and Katie experience Europe together, sights trigger Coburn's memories of her father. She faces her regret for what might have been even as she learns to live in the moment with her daughter, building sweet memories for both of them that will last forever. The narrative goes back and forth in time between the present of their trips and Coburn's memories of life with her not quite famous singer/songwriter father.

As in many travel memoirs, this is filled with funny personal anecdotes told with humorous turns of phrase. Coburn is up front about the fact that she is insecure and not a seasoned traveler herself so she and Katie rely on the kindness of strangers, often strangers who don't speak their language. As expected, this leads to a number of misunderstandings and tight connections. But the memoir is quite introspective, sometimes too light on the outside setting of the sights and sounds of the places they're visiting. And occasionally Coburn's memories of her father and her deep need for his love overwhelm the story of the memories she's building with her own daughter. But the growth that both Coburn and Katie show over the years and the ways in which they appreciate each other as more than parent and child, as friends really, and these amazing experiences in their lives is lovely. The writing is intimate and accessible; it's like listening to a friend tell you the story of her European vacation. It may inspire other parents to travel with their children or give people places to add to their bucket lists but it will certainly show people one way to learn to live in the moment and appreciate what you have in the here and now. This is definitely a sweet paean to memory: those that we already possess and those we are forever building.

For more, watch the book trailer:

For more information about Jennifer Coburn and the book, take a look at her Facebook page, connect with her on Facebook follow her on Twitter, or take a look at the book's page on GoodReads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Emma from France Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Amazon says this about the book: The highly anticipated sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel The Rosie Project, starring the same extraordinary couple now living in New York and unexpectedly expecting their first child. Get ready to fall in love all over again.

Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are back. The Wife Project is complete, and Don and Rosie are happily married and living in New York. But they’re about to face a new challenge because— surprise!—Rosie is pregnant.

Don sets about learning the protocols of becoming a father, but his unusual research style gets him into trouble with the law. Fortunately his best friend Gene is on hand to offer advice: he’s left Claudia and moved in with Don and Rosie.

As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting Gene and Claudia to reconcile, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave the Baseball Fan save his business, and staying on the right side of Lydia the social worker, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him the most.

Graeme Simsion first introduced these unforgettable characters in The Rosie Project, which NPR called “sparkling entertainment along the lines of Where’d You Go Bernadette and When Harry Met Sally.” The San Francisco Chronicle said, “sometimes you just need a smart love story that will make anyone, man or woman, laugh out loud.” If you were swept away by the book that’s captivated a million readers worldwide, you will love The Rosie Effect.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Sometimes I wonder if there's ever going to be peace in this world. What if we boiled things down to one on one personal interactions? Would that make for more understanding and cooperation, at least on balance? Can a friendship or a marriage between people who come from groups so diametrically opposed to each other ever work or is there too much cultural baggage involved? Will the events of our world allow any sort of cross-cultural happiness and peace or will even the personal be rent apart by the world's intolerance? Claire Hajaj's bittersweet novel Ishmael's Oranges takes on this very topic with an exiled Arab man meeting a Jewish woman, the two falling in love, getting married, and facing a complicated life together.

Salim is just a child when, forced by war, his family must leave their farm in Jaffa, and the orange tree that his father planted upon his birth. This exile splinters his family beyond repair. As he grows up and leaves for school in Britain, he never forgets the orange tree tethering him to Jaffa. Changing his name to Sal, at a party, he meets Jude, a Jewish woman who has had her own experience of religious hatred and intolerance. Not without difficulty, working through deep, longstanding emotions about each other's religious and cultural identity, and despite heavy familial opposition, they fall in love and marry, determined to be together and to make things work. They carve out a life far from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but they cannot remain inured to it forever; they will ultimately have to face their own pasts, prejudices, and deep seated beliefs. Confronting those bone deep issues may just break the family they've created.

The first half of the book, which offers equally the perspective of Sal and Jude both, is stronger than the second half, where Jude's perspective is often lost. The frame of the opening letter, which only becomes clear in the end, could work but since it takes so long for the reader to understand it in its entirety, it loses a lot of its power and immediacy. But the writing is clear and unbiased and the characters' emotions are stark, affecting, and very real. The ending of the story is small and hopeful despite the sadness and horror that precedes it, leaving open the question of whether or not there can ever be true peace between these two groups of people who have hated for so long. There are stories and memories that foster anger long into the future but there are also the memories of happiness and love as well. We just have to choose which memories will triumph.

Hajaj has written a moving and poignant tale of humanity, the marginalizing of the "other,", the issue and importance of identity, and the often overlooked personal cost of the continuing fight between the Israelis and the Palestinians. She doesn't offer any easy answers to the social issues confronting Sal and Jude; in fact, sadly, even love can't always overcome everything and prevent tragedy. The novel, with its love story and themes of racism, obsession, and hunger for justice, provides an interesting perspective on the political being personal, the way that those around us shape our beings and beliefs, and the power of childhood hurts and betrayals.

It was a very busy week here this past week. First, the oldest child got his first college acceptance letter, which was a huge weight off of his shoulders. Here's hoping there are more in his future (but he's comforted enough to know he will be going off to college next year no matter what). I took said kid on another college visit and got in some great conversation in the car (3 hours each way). The youngest child finished his school play and I helped out with the cast party even though I wasn't scheduled to since I am one of those perpetual volunteer types. A friend's husband came over and helped me learn how to switch out the ugly pedestal sink in the powder room for the vanity that's been sitting in my garage for over a month now. And because nothing is ever as easy as it should be, we had to remove baseboards that were sunk a good inch to an inch and a half below the tile floor to make it all work. Glad I had someone who knew what he was doing to guide me! I started thinking about what Thanksgiving is going to look like and planning the menu for our annual after Thanksgiving party. The combination of the two mean I will be in the kitchen for three days straight. Good thing I like to cook for sure. Lots of reading this past week but that all happened as I wound down for bed since I was too busy any other time to pick a book up and definitely too busy to review anything. This, of course, means that the to be reviewed list is appalling. So just skip that horrendous thing and pretend like I'm all on top of things, will you? Because I don't anticipate it getting any better this week either. After all, I can read with a wooden spoon in my hand, but not review anything standing at the stove. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Gentlemen Prefer Curves by Sugar Jamison
We'll Always Have Paris by Jennifer Coburn
Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes
Small Blessings by Martha Woodroof
The Rake's Handbook by Sally Orr

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft
Falling For Max by Shannon Stacey
Christmas Brides by Suzanne Enoch, Alexandra Hawkins, Elizabeth Essex, and Valerie Bowman
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma
The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison
To Marry a Scottish Laird by Lynsay Sands
The Way North edited by Ron Riekki
Z by Therese Anne Fowler
While the Gods Were Sleeping by Elizabeth Enslin
I'll Take You by Eliza Kennedy
Inn at Last Chance by Hope Ramsey
The Wedding Guests by Meredith Goldstein
Talk Dirty to Me by Dakota Cassidy
Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by Ian Morgan Cron
Gentlemen Prefer Curves by Sugar Jamison
We'll Always Have Paris by Jennifer Coburn
Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes
Small Blessings by Martha Woodroof
The Rake's Handbook by Sally Orr

Amazon says this about the book: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her “How did you get to be the woman you are today.” She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant’s previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Every day the news tells us that we as a society are getting fatter. Stories about the ways in which American children are failing educationally pop up like mushrooms. Pharmaceutical commercials constantly interrupt our television shows and more of us are medicated against depression and anxiety than ever before in history. There are an abundance of ideas to explain why we are so much fatter, dumber, unhappier, and less engaged than previous generations The fact that we eat and drink so many prepackaged foods, which are chock full of substances created in a lab to try and appeal to our ideas of taste, color, smell, and texture, as well as our desire for convenience, is certainly something we can point to that is very different in our lives than it was for our grandparents and great-grandparents. Could that in fact be the culprit for so many of our woes? Stephan Eirik Clark's debut satirical novel, Sweetness #9, suggests, through one hapless narrator, that it could indeed.

David Leveraux is an apprentice flavorist with an enormous food chemical company in the early 1970s. His company is working on getting FDA approval for a new sugar substitute called Sweetness #9 and David, with his newly minted master's degree, is running clinical trials on rats fed large concentrations of the chemical. His non-communicative lab mate is running similar trials on chimpanzees. David is thrilled to be on the cusp of the introduction of this cutting edge creation until he starts noticing some disturbing trends in his rats and in the chimps next door. The company is unconcerned with results as long as "the Nine" doesn't cause cancer and when David tries to bring his concerns to higher ups, he loses his job, leading to a downward spiral that jeopardizes his marriage and ultimately sees him land in a mental institution.

Fast forward twenty years. It seems as if David has pulled his life together, now the father of two teenagers and a respected food chemist at another food chemical company with whose founder he is incredibly close. But life is not as happy and well adjusted as it seems. Sweetness #9 and red dye #40 have become ubiquitous and David starts to see the same sorts of problems in his wife and children that he once documented in his rats. His wife, Betty, is heavier than she's ever been and is constantly fighting her weight, guzzling diet soda all day long. His daughter, Priscilla, is depressed. She's become a vegan, like her best friend, and is determined to uncover the deceit in the food industry a la Woodward and Bernstein, starting with her father. Son Ernest, named for David's mentor and boss, has stopped speaking using verbs, communicating in single words or short phrases only. He is perpetually hungry, craving frozen, processed, and luridly colored foods by the ton. David himself is alternately afflicted with a fear of exposure for his role in Sweetness #9's FDA approval and with apathy and anxiety.

Written by David as a rough memoir years after the events of the novel, the story is a scathing satire of the food industry and the society that demands a certain smell, taste, and color in it's food but doesn't want the consequences of those demands. Sugar makes us fat so instead of foregoing it and the sweet flavor it imparts, we must have a non-sugar alternative with the same taste. The Leveraux family is certainly a mirror of America's growing problem, something the novel calls the "American Condition." But in addition to being an indictment of the way we eat, the way we live, and the drive for progress even at the expense of our health, mental and physical, this is a novel of family and relationship. It is a call for authenticity and honesty in all parts of our lives. David Leveraux is a conflicted character. His misguided attempts to follow his own conscience are bumbling. And if it's hard to understand why he allows his family to continue to ingest so many of the chemicals he himself has long had reservations about, especially in light of their unhappiness, it becomes clear it is because he is a pitiable and ineffective father and husband. As everything is from David's perspective, the other characters are only explored in relation to him and so are less well developed and well-rounded than his own character is.
But he faithfully relates his failures with those he loves and his inability to communicate meaningfully with them.

The timing of the novel starts off slowly but crescendos towards a very quick ending, one that refuses to wrap-up many plot threads, which may frustrate some readers. The jump in time from the 1970s to the late 90s happens with just a quick skim of the less important intervening years. In addition to the main time line, there are brief mentions of David's youth and his mentor, Ernst's, role in feeding Hitler during WWII. The former, sparsely used, sets David up as a man slightly out of step with modern America and the latter becomes a major plot point only late in the novel, giving it an uneven importance. Although there are a few stumbles or rushes here or there, this is a thoroughly engrossing read. The moral conundrum of what David's ethical responsibility is, combined with the sly social commentary is like the subtle chemical combinations that food flavorists use to make that dinner out of a box more palatable, bringing disparate things together to create a completely different perception of the whole on the part of the reader. And although I had already given up diet soda, after reading this, I find myself avidly reading the ingredients list on anything I pull from the grocery store shelves, much more conscious of just what I am putting into my body and into my family's bodies.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft
Falling For Max by Shannon Stacey
Christmas Brides by Suzanne Enoch, Alexandra Hawkins, Elizabeth Essex, and Valerie Bowman
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma
The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison
To Marry a Scottish Laird by Lynsay Sands
The Way North edited by Ron Riekki
Z by Therese Anne Fowler
While the Gods Were Sleeping by Elizabeth Enslin
I'll Take You by Eliza Kennedy
Inn at Last Chance by Hope Ramsey
The Wedding Guests by Meredith Goldstein
Talk Dirty to Me by Dakota Cassidy
Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me by Ian Morgan Cron
Sweetness #9 by Stephan Eirik Clark

The story of a troubled girl and the horse her neighbor wants her to stay away from, this sounds like it will be a wonderful, tear-filled novel of healing.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

In the racially tense times immediately preceding the Civil War, it is perhaps hard to imagine that there were in fact isolated communities that served as havens of tolerance, that not only accepted but embraced and protected the mix of people within its boundaries. One such place was Russell's Knob, a hidey hole of a place tucked onto a mounatin and home to a big mix of races. While this particular community in Breena Clarke's newest novel, Angels Make Their Hope Here, is fictional, it grew out of the possibility of such a place existing according to the historical record. But even such a place could not protect all of its inhabitants from the cruelty and racism of the outside world as Clarke's characters know.

Dossie Bird is just a young girl when her parents send her north through the Underground Railroad. But Dossie doesn't make it to freedom, landing instead on the farm of a brutal and cruel couple who use her badly. Saved by conductor Duncan Smoot and taken to his own home in Russell's Knob, Dossie passes many years keeping house and tending chickens for Duncan, becoming family of a sort, and finding comfort in the fiercely protective community. Through these years, she grows into adulthood, a beautiful young woman watching, waiting, and hoping to be worthy enough for Duncan to make her his wife. She settles into Russell's Knob and the Smoot family, closer in age to Duncan's nephews Pet Wilhelm and Jan Smoot than to Duncan himself. And one of them, Jan, has eyes for Dossie despite her marriage to his uncle. In his zeal to show off for Dossie, he exposes her to the extreme danger of the local town close to Russell's Knob, a town not entirely accepting of the mixed race, "jumbled" mountain folk who come there to trade at market. After a terrible act of violence, Dossie must flee Russell's Knob in order to protect the kind people who once took her in, landing in New York City just before the 1863 draft riots where she will finally come into her own as a woman, find unexpected love, and survive horrific brutality.

Early on, Dossie as a character is loyal and stubborn but she has trouble maintaining her position, being easily influenced by others. She's definitely young, not knowing what is right for her to do and what crosses a line. Handicapped by being both a woman and black, she is often uncertain, unlike the other female characters here who are strong and sure, even if they too must suffer the indignity of being female and powerlessness. The relationships between the characters are authentic and deep and their interactions build the bonds of family and community tightly within the narrative. For the first half of the novel, the plot is fairly domestic and although there's definitely some tension as Jan covets his uncle's wife, it is a leisurely meandering tale. In the second half of the novel, when Dossie leaves Russell's Knob with Jan, she must learn to trust and rely on herself in ways that she was never challenged to do in the safety of Duncan's home. And when her world is overtaken by terror and grief, she comes into the fully realized strength that she started building back then, understanding that she herself is her own and only refuge in the world. Russell's Knob is beautifully described in fascinating detail and the heart pounding terror of the draft riots is immediate. Although the beginning of the novel is slow to engage the reader, if she stays the course, the end has a fierceness and a dignity to it that it entirely fitting and true. Clarke has captured the strife of the times, the localized feelings that supported or disapproved of slavery and the coming war, and the ultimate power of a woman who finds her voice.

Friday, November 14, 2014

And I mean that title not only in the literal sense of running but also in the sense of consecutive days. Yes, I have been out running for the past five days, all in a row. That is more than I've done in a very long time. The last time I ran a lot, I was in a whole different decade of my life. I was many pounds thinner. My knees cooperated with me much better. But it's time to get back to what helped me be thinner and healthier then. I got on the scale the other day and saw a number that I had vowed to myself I was never going to see again. And yet there I stood. Why is it that the vows we make to ourselves (think New Year's Resolutions) are the easiest ones to break? We honor promises to mere acquaintances but we don't honor those made to the person with whom we are most intimate, ourselves. That has to stop so I am hauling my sorry butt out the door kicking and screaming and running again.

And you know it wouldn't be me running without ridiculousness ensuing, right? So far in the past five days I have had running tights that tried to fall off my hind end, causing me to attempt to give myself a wedgie about every five feet, at least until I was sweaty enough for them to stick permanently; I have almost stepped on a small snake (what is it with me and wildlife that needs to stay in the wild and quit scaring me anyway?!); I have been breezed past by a running neighbor who paused momentarily and fell back to chat with me before looking at her watch, realizing just how badly I was tanking her run, and racing off again; I have had to fight the urge to stop running and cry when Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah came on the iPod in the middle of the run instead of the end where it once was, long ago when a much fitter and faster me created the playlist specifically for my runs; and just today I had to deal with swirling winds that managed to blow as headwinds each and every time I faced a hill. I still don't believe in omens but if I did, I'd say that someone up there agrees with my chiropractor, who told me on Monday that I shouldn't be running, or at least not running on streets. I love Dr. George, but he just doesn't understand how hard it is to push my butt out the door and do this. Adding in driving to a track (boring) or the Greenway just to have a softer surface to run on would likely end up with me running errands in running clothes, not running in running clothes. And with that number on the scale and the strangulation hold of my pants around my middle, well, we just can't have that.

I have been alternating my mileage between short and shorter these past five days. No need to make myself hurt so badly I never want to see my Asics again, right? And this morning I'm pretty sure I looked fantastic on my run. You know all those women who go to the gym wearing makeup? I admit I have been very judgy about them in the past. But today I ran in makeup so I felt extra glamorous about exercising. Ok, not really. I put on makeup (mainly just eye stuff) last night for a charity do we went to because I thought I should wear at least as much eyeliner as my twelve year old son had on. (He's currently Cubby the Lost Boy in the his middle school's production of Peter Pan and he seems to like eyeliner about as much as I do, which is to say not at all but he'll have to wear it again tonight and I won't. The benefits of being a grown-up!) In any case, when both T. and I went to wash the makeup off, we both discovered that soap was not adequate and since I really never wear makeup, I had nothing better to work with. Hence both of us still had on eyeliner this morning when we woke up. Not sure how that's going to fly today at school for him but in my case, it made for a cosmetically enhanced run that ended with me looking like a demented powder puff football player with eye black streaking down her cheeks. Soap may not budge eyeliner but sweat sure does! Not that I ever expected to win any fashion awards while running (or any time, really). And now I'm not so judgmental about other women working out in makeup. Maybe they too just didn't manage to get it to come off before their morning workout. Unless, of course, they aren't sporting bedhead with the made-up face. In that case, well, I still find them suspect. They're probably the women who claim they don't sweat too. (Liars.)

The temperature here is dropping like a rock and we're heading into the ten pound plus holidays but it's the right time to work on me again. Hopefully this time I can keep my vow to myself. I don't think I'll keep up the eyeliner thing, I fervently hope the snakes have all hibernated for the winter, and with a little bit of luck my pants will stay on my butt but you'll continue to see me plugging around the streets (sorry Dr. George), ideally losing weight under my seventeen layers, and even continuing to share the misadventures that are bound to follow.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Society gives us a shared moral code to live by. It legislates what is right and what is wrong. But what is legislated and considered moral has undoubtedly changed and morphed over time. Some of the things that were once illegal are now legal and those that were legal are now illegal. So morality and justice are not always just about what society deems to be acceptable and what is reprehensible. We have to find good and right and moral deep down in our bones and our souls. We can use society's guidelines, and frequently do, but we also must be certain in our hearts and our minds of just what justice and morality looks like. And sometimes that certainty is neither black or white but somewhere in between. Victor Bevine's historical novel, Certainty, poses the challenge of what is right when society and deep cherished beliefs come into conflict, putting a character into a situation where his own faith and understanding of morality is in question.

In 1919, just as WWI is ending, there are 25,000 Navy men in Newport, Rhode Island. For a town that normally has only 5,000 service men, this is a huge and troublesome number. The men drink, gamble, and carouse. There are prostitutes to cater to all these young men. The Navy is focused on rooting out all this vice, especially those men who are interested in the almost literally unspeakable act of sodomy. They are determined to crack down on "fairies" and eject from their ranks any homosexual they can find. In order to do that, they enlist the help of a large group of men ordered to entrap the unsuspecting and file a report about their forbidden sexual abomination. This effort eventually became known as the Newport Navy Vice Scandal of 1919. As bad as it would have been to keep it confined within the Navy itself, three of the men make allegations that result in the arrest of a cherished civilian, the Reverend Kent.

William Bartlett is a junior lawyer from a respected family. He is a morally upstanding man whose wife Sarah is very active in social causes. Through her, he first meets the Reverend Kent, a deeply kind and genuinely good man who is thoughtful, measured, humble, and driven to care for and help those around him. When William hears that Reverend Kent has been accused of sexual impropriety, of the horror of homosexuality, he is appalled that anyone could ever believe this of such a morally upright man and he urges the Reverend to fight the charges. But if William is certain that Kent is innocent, he still weighs his unease over the scandalous nature of the charges, struggling between his desire to live up to his father's memory and do right and to protect his family and career from the dishonor of being associated with such a court case.

The novel is told in third person with emphasis on William, Kent, and several of the men participating in this witch hunt, including Charlie McKinney, a charismatic, opportunistic young man who lived on the streets and survived on his wits, and naive seventeen year old Barker, who idolizes Charlie. The revolving narration allows the readers to know a little more about each man and the things that drive him. The bulk of the narration focuses on William and his grappling with the understanding that justice doesn't always serve right and that there's more to good and evil than guilt or innocence, especially in the case of socially constructed morality. In general the characters are a bit uneven in their own portrayal, hewing to type rather than being balanced out by imperfections: the conscientious lawyer fighting for right, the saintly reverend ministering to the dying and the lonely, the former street urchin who finds his own moral fiber, the angry caricature of a Navy man determined to punish and threaten and intimidate anyone he can. But the story is a gripping one, and the tension rises at a steady pace with the outcome of the trial in doubt right to the very end. That this is based on a true event in our history adds another layer of fascination to the tale and gives us insight into the ways in which we have progressed as a society as well as the ways in which we are clearly the descendants of these men, so constrained by their preconceived ideas that they cannot admit to a gentler, less unbending truth.

For more information about Victor Bevine and the book, take a look at his Facebook page, follow him on Twitter, or take a look at the book's page on GoodReads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Amazon says this about the book: After a day of being dumped—twice—and accidentally killing a goose, a young woman yearns for a tropical vacation far from the chaos of her life. Instead, her plans are wrecked by her best friend’s four-year-old deaf-mute son, thrust into her reluctant care. But when the boy chooses the winning numbers for a lottery ticket, the two of them set off on a road trip across Iceland with a glove compartment stuffed full of their jackpot earnings. Along the way, they encounter black sand beaches, cucumber farms, lava fields, flocks of sheep, an Estonian choir, a falconer, a hitchhiker, and both of her exes desperate for another chance. What begins as a spontaneous adventure will unexpectedly and profoundly change the way she views her past and charts her future.

Butterflies in November is a blackly comic, charming, and uplifting tale of friends and lovers, motherhood, and self-discovery.

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft
Falling For Max by Shannon Stacey
Christmas Brides by Suzanne Enoch, Alexandra Hawkins, Elizabeth Essex, and Valerie Bowman
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma
The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison
To Marry a Scottish Laird by Lynsay Sands
The Way North edited by Ron Riekki
Z by Therese Anne Fowler
While the Gods Were Sleeping by Elizabeth Enslin
I'll Take You by Eliza Kennedy
Inn at Last Chance by Hope Ramsey
The Wedding Guests by Meredith Goldstein
Talk Dirty to Me by Dakota Cassidy

A forty year old account executive, a romance writer's convention, and what it means to take control of your own life, how could this not be delectable?

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

I have been spending the past couple of weeks going on college visits with my oldest child. (Here's where I save you from having to offer me empty compliments: yes, I am in fact old enough to have a child going off to college next year--God willing and the creek don't rise--despite the almost sincere avowals about my youthfulness that courtesy requires.) In any case, going on college visits for your kid is sort of shocking, especially since I feel like I was just on my own college visits last week too. In the really long time blink of the eye since I was in the college choice process myself, things have changed a lot. Colleges have Starbucks and Burger King and the like on campus for their students' convenience. At many of them, there's no need for cash to pay for this stuff either; it all comes out of their meal plan dollars or the extra bucks that come with the meal plan. And let's talk about the regular old cafeteria, shall we? Holy cow! The choice and the appealing smells! This is not your mother's dining hall, kid. No college seems to charge kids for laundry anymore, which makes me wonder if I can pay a tuition bill with the rolls of quarters we'd been assembling in advance of sending our darling off into the big, bad, responsible world. Every campus seems to have game rooms and the like (often with state of the art electronics) in order to entice students in their free time. Seriously, they beat the hell out of my basement, that's for sure. A mom on yesterday's tour told me that one of the colleges she'd visited with her daughter included entertaining their students as one of the fundamental things with which they *must* provide the student body, ranking it up there with food, housing, and education. Every college we've visited yet this year has gifted my child with a t-shirt instead of making us fork over my money at the bookstore. And dorm rooms? Some of them, including those for freshmen, are nicer than our first apartment (not that my husband and I felt deprived in any way, mind you, because we lived in cubbyholes in college, not suites with full kitchens, private bedrooms, a common room, and a bathroom shared between a mere four people). Staggering, really.

But these are all fairly superficial differences designed to attract a very privileged generation, of which I am, admittedly, raising three members (although I've tried to hammer the entitlement out of them as best I can). The biggest difference I noticed though, the one that is more than icing on a cake, is at the campus libraries and the school bookstores. Several college visits in and I have to admit that when we walk into one or the other of these places, I still look to see the books. And I am saddened by the obvious, gaping lack. Sure, there are still some here and there. But more often the libraries are full of computers and study areas and only a few lonely looking stacks. The bookstores are overrun with sweatshirts, yoga pants, and blankets, with but a mere corner devoted to actual books. And their absence makes my heart bleed for all the improvements that are so conspicuously much more valued than books. I recognize that we're visiting at a time of year when kids aren't buying course texts and so that's to account for some of it, that the bookstores have sent back the unsold books from first semester to make room for the upcoming texts for second semester. And I know that much of the information we used to look up in the library stacks is now found digitally on the ever ubiquitous computers. But I do still mourn. (I could mourn a little less if someone, somewhere could see fit to give me the gift of a card catalog of my very own because that's another thing I desperately miss. I am deadly serious, but I do digress.) Walking around with my son and seeing the amazing things ahead of him next year, including the food options, game rooms, suite living, and more, I half wish I could go back to college again myself. But in the same moment, I am glad that my long past college experience had books spilling out of it at every turn, from the library to the bookstore to the bowed shelves in my small non-private dorm room.
His experience will undoubtedly be very different than mine, not least because he will avoid the English department like the plague. I have no worries that he'll get a good education, I wouldn't be writing tuitions checks if I did, but I am glad that if we isn't surrounded by books at school next year, he certainly will be whenever he comes home. He might have all the fast food and video games he wants at school, but he'll always get a taste of old school books at my house.

I've mostly been sunk in light reads and romances this week, what with contemplating the imminence of the first fledgling leaving the nest and all. I explored Nepal from the perspective of an American anthropologist interested in women's issues, a woman who also happened to be married to a Nepali man. I watched as a woman incapable of fidelity tried to decide if she could marry her unsuspecting fiancé. I faced a spoiled teenaged ghost who drove his now adult brother and a B and B owner into each other's lives. I had a front row seat as five single guests at a wedding brought their own dramas, imperfect lives, and often regrettable behaviour to the reception. And I was entertained as two former lovers battled over the phone sex empire that their beloved mutual friend left them in his will.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Weather can have a big impact on people and their emotions. Sunny days make it easier to be happy. Grey, overcast days inspire lethargy and can feed depression. So the rising of a storm coupled with a terrible diagnosis would easily symbolize a growing grief and could certainly inspire denial and avoidance, a desire to run and hide from the coming trauma as do the characters in Michelle Bailat-Jones' lyrical short novel.

Alec Chester has lived in Japan for forty years, teaching English. As a South African in a small Japanese town, he is used to being the outsider, remaining one always, despite the fact that his wife, Kanae, is Japanese and their children are half Japanese. As the town, in the shadow of the Fog Island Mountains, braces for a coming typhoon, Alec is given a diagnosis of terminal cancer. His wife, suspecting the grim prognosis, doesn't meet Alec at the hospital for the diagnosis. Nor does she visit after his exploratory surgery. In fact, she is running and hiding from the truth of his condition, angry that despite his promise never to leave her that he will in fact die and do just that, and so she commits an act that she will want to undo almost from the moment of commission. When Alec leaves the hospital and goes missing, Kanae must acknowledge her feelings in the face of his disappearance and choose to either accept or reject the fear that he might have gone away to commit suicide. Opting to reject that possibility, now she too must head fearlessly into the teeth of the coming storm.

Narrated by an old and wise storyteller named Azami, who finds and heals wild animals, the novel is pitched in the stages of the impending storm, emotions echoing the violence and the fury, as well as the calm, of the coming weather. Azami has insights into the entire community although her focus is the emotional chaos of the Chester family, from Alec and Kanae, accepting the diagnosis in different ways, to oldest daughter Megumi, who refuses to tell anyone who the father of her young son is, to fragile, scared daughter Naomi, to son Ken'ichi, fact driven and soon to be a father himself. Alec is adrift in his own body, the rising storm outside mirroring the rising storm inside him. And rather than battening down the hatches, he and Kanae take separate emotional flights away from each other and what is to come before racing back towards the safe harbor of their shared past.

Bailat-Jones' writing is spare, gorgeous, and dreamy and the novel is stunning in its emotional impact. She has taken the natural world, in the symbol of the gathering typhoon and woven it throughout the narrative to great effect. And she has used the traditional Japanese mythological spirit of the kitsune, in the person of Azami, carefully and deliberately to tell this story as it must be told. The characters are fully rounded in their fears and the way they acknowledge or suppress their emotions. The story is both tragic and a triumph, all at once contemplative, brutal, and tender. There is a slow building tension to the narrative as the storm grows ever closer and as with an outsized storm, the aftermath for everyone is forever changed, washed clean, and immortalized in the remarkable tale so recently told. An elegant, graceful tale of grief, sorrow, and leaving, this is beautifully rendered and will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

For more information about Michelle Bailat-Jones and the book, take a look at her web page, follow her on Twitter, or take a look at the book's page on GoodReads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book. If you'd like to listen to a clip of the book, check it out at Audible.com.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Amazon says this about the book: The author of The Dead Beat and This Book is Overdue! turns her piercing eye and charming wit to the real-life avatars of Indiana Jones—the archaeologists who sort through the muck and mire of swamps, ancient landfills, volcanic islands, and other dirty places to reclaim history for us all.

Pompeii, Machu Picchu, the Valley of the Kings, the Parthenon—the names of these legendary archaeological sites conjure up romance and mystery. The news is full of archaeology: treasures found (British king under parking lot) and treasures lost (looters, bulldozers, natural disaster, and war). Archaeological research tantalizes us with possibilities (are modern humans really part Neandertal?). Where are the archaeologists behind these stories? What kind of work do they actually do, and why does it matter?

Marilyn Johnson’s Lives in Ruins is an absorbing and entertaining look at the lives of contemporary archaeologists as they sweat under the sun for clues to the puzzle of our past. Johnson digs and drinks alongside archaeologists, chases them through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and even Machu Picchu, and excavates their lives. Her subjects share stories we rarely read in history books, about slaves and Ice Age hunters, ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, children of the first century, Chinese woman warriors, sunken fleets, mummies.

What drives these archaeologists is not the money (meager) or the jobs (scarce) or the working conditions (dangerous), but their passion for the stories that would otherwise be buried and lost.

Monday, November 3, 2014

As my own children grow ever closer to young adulthood and to striking out on their own, I worry more and more about the world and them making their way in it. The choices they make will change them. Those choices can harm them or help them; either way they will certainly be life altering. As they move out into the world, their friendships, once so solid seeming, may change or fade or end and they may one day have to face the betrayal of a friend. It is a hard lesson and one so many of us have had to learn. Books like Charlee Fam's debut novel, Last Train to Babylon, don't help to assuage my fears for my kids. In fact, it even reinforces some of them, but it is so realistic and true as a possibility for today's twentysomethings that it cannot be dismissed.

The prologue opens with Aubrey Glass waking up in a hospital bed. She doesn't quite remember how she ended up there but it is clear that something deep and unhappy haunts her since there is a psychologist at her side asking her questions. And from this, the rest of the novel takes off. Moving backwards in time to before the hospital bed, Aubrey is surprised to hear from her mother that her former best friend, Rachel, has committed suicide. In fact, it is Aubrey who has five years worth of suicide notes in case she chooses to end it all. (She also has break-up notes to leave for the boyfriend with whom she lives if it comes to that rather than suicide.) She is angry that everyone wants her to grieve over someone who hurt her as badly as Rachel once did, not that she allows the reader to know what happened between them, at least not to start. As she works through her own internal rants about Rachel, she paints a picture of an unequal and unrewarding friendship. Rachel sounds awful but Aubrey doesn't sound any better. And she has no intention of going home to the funeral and the after party being organized in Rachel's memory. But she does go home where she is faced with the memories of everything that was right and then went so very wrong.

The novel moves back and forth from the past to the present as Aubrey works through her feelings both about what happened years ago to irreparably break their friendship then and how she feels now knowing that Rachel is gone. Aubrey tells the story herself, allowing her to give an incomplete accounting, continue to hide just what Rachel did to her, and to avoid the elephant in the room of the trauma that drives her whole existence now. She's a cold character, afraid of feeling emotion, who drinks to forget, to mute life, to self-medicate. She has fooled herself into thinking that she is over what happened but by never addressing it, she has allowed it to close her off to life, enjoyment, and connection. Aubrey is clearly damaged and cannot start to heal until she addresses the pain and truth of her past. She is not particularly likable and she portrays Rachel as a controlling, toxic, mean girl, queen bee too; even so Aubrey's lashing out at those who want to change Rachel's character after death is violent and self-destructive. The tone of the book is edgy, angry, and dark. Despite the bleakness of the story, especially once Aubrey allows herself to admit what happened to her, it still contains the seed of the importance of forgiveness and acceptance. Your choices can lead you into nightmares but holding onto them, internalizing them, and forever shouldering the blame robs you of the chance for future happiness. In capturing the voices of the Millennial Generation so clearly, Fam has written a hard nosed novel about truth, victimhood, and the end of friendship, one that is hard to read, with characters it is hard to like, but that still compels the reader to keep turning pages.

For more information about Charlee Fam and the book, take a look at her web page, follow her on Twitter, or take a look at the book's page on GoodReads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

I spent the weekend with my daughter at a dance competition. While I wrote no reviews over that three day span and only finished one book I had already started before I went, I did get some Christmas shopping accomplished, spent time with the other dance moms and girls (no, we're nothing like on the tv show), and got to watch my daughter dance her solo better than I've seen it yet. She's gotten so good! So not a big bookish week, but a great week nonetheless. And I think I've finished all of the previously requested book reviews so if you have any in that last list that you'd like to see me write sooner, let me know and I'll try to get right on that. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Way North edited by Ron Riekki
Last Train to Babylon by Charlee Fam
Z by Therese Anne Fowler
Fog Island Mountains by Michelle Bailat-Jones

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft
Falling For Max by Shannon Stacey
Christmas Brides by Suzanne Enoch, Alexandra Hawkins, Elizabeth Essex, and Valerie Bowman
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma
The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison
To Marry a Scottish Laird by Lynsay Sands
The Way North edited by Ron Riekki
Last Train to Babylon by Charlee Fam
Z by Therese Anne Fowler
Fog Island Mountains by Michelle Bailat-Jones

Traveling through Europe with her daughter on a trip Coburn wanted to take because she was afraid of dying young, a vacation that taught her to live life to the fullest, this memoir sounds fantastic.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

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About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.